jamming: Technically called "improvising",
"jamming" for a skilled player is playing freely within a set of musical
rules.
Many, many people learn to play set pieces, such as "Red River Valley",
or "Juke" by Little Walter, but never learn to "jam" or improvise.
As you progress in Harmonica SuperStart's CD#2 (Advanced) you have
lots of color patterns and techniques that become your "bag of tricks"
- you can pull them out and put them in the right place in the song and
you'll sound great!
Here's an example of jamming from Harmonica SuperStart's CD#2:
it's a clip from a Reggae song called Tan Lines You
be jammin'!! (with colors!)
diatonic harmonica: this is
the technical term for what, Western people especially, consider as "a
harmonica", or "the harmonica".
The diatonic harmonica is by far the harmonica most used in popular
music of all sorts, such as songs by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Dan Aykroyd
in the Blues Brothers movie, John Popper of Blues Traveler, just to name
some names that many people think of when they think "harmonica".
The diatonic harmonica is called "diatonic" because the bottom 4 holes
of the harmonica are set up to play chords when you blow them all at once,
instead of a "do-re-me" blow-draw arrangement.
draw: "Draw" in harmonica
language means "inhale", as in "drawing water up from a well", which is
a good image to keep for harmonica playing because there are lots of advantages
in thinking of your breath and tone originating from down at the bottom
of your lungs.
tone: as in "big tone" or "fat"
tone - one of the things that makes the harmonica such a remarkable instrument
is that there are somany things the player can do to influence
the quality of the sound of their instrument.
In simple terms, the better the quality of sound being produced
by the player, the better the "tone".
This is a very important, even crucial factor in harmonica
playing because a player with good tone is welcomed no matter
what they play, and a player with bad tone is sent packing, no matter how
many songs they know or how fast they can play, etc.
"Big" tone or "fat" tone is acheived by optimizing the sound
chambers of the body: relaxation, breathing , mouth positions, and so forth:
acheiving good tone, big, fat tone has a section all to itself in Harmonica
SuperStart - playing with good tone is a big part of your "SuperStart"!
tongue-blocking: tongue-blocking
is a cool trick where you put your tongue onto or slightly into certain
holes of the harmonica, which makes those holes not sound when you blow
or draw there (hence the term "blocking"!).
Space or spaces are still open to the left or right of the tongue, so
you are getting your sound from around those tongue-blocked holes.
Tongue-blocking sounds great for all kinds of music and you get
to do it on Harmonica SuperStart CD #2!! Here's a soundclip
example - the musical style is Funk, the song is called Harp
U Got, from Harmonica
SuperStart CD #2!! click
to play
